


Of the Reverend Mr Giles and His Wife: An Evening Out

by ljs



Series: Of the Reverend Mr Giles and His Wife [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, regency au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-15
Updated: 2011-04-15
Packaged: 2017-10-18 02:58:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reverend Giles and his wife Anya are chaperoning their charges Miss Buffy Summers and Miss Dawn Summers at a summer dance. Things happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of the Reverend Mr Giles and His Wife: An Evening Out

“My dearest Rupert, this is the stuffiest party,” said Mrs Giles, plying her fan with great speed.

The Reverend Mr Giles, inured to the peculiarities of his beloved Anya's mind, understood that she meant this quite literally, a remark on the heat of the drawing room rather than an animadversion on the boredom engendered by the company. Others sometimes laughed at her strangely literal mind, but he often found himself in sympathy with her, including on this occasion.

Indeed it was quite warm for early April. The village of Sunnydale, a jewel set in a green and well-tended corner of England, had seemingly gone from the coldest of winters to the first touch of summer without pausing at spring, and Sir Quentin Travers' ballroom held the day's heat far too well.

It must be admitted that Mr Giles' thoughts regarding their host tended toward the uncharitable at the best of times – yet this evening social event, somewhere between a gathering and an informal hop, was showing the often tendentious and overbearing Sir Quentin near his best. Sir Quentin was at the moment in conversation with a young connection of his, Mr Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. Mr Giles earlier had become quite impatient over the young man's pronouncements regarding the obedience required to the Church which they both served, and he wouldn't have been able to support extended interaction with such a pretentious puppy--

The thwack of Mrs Giles' fan against Mr Giles' stomach recalled his thoughts. (His darling wife was given to such demonstrations; he was wholly accustomed to them now, and twitched only a fraction.) “My darling?” he said.

“Aren't you hot?” she said, in a manner indicating she had asked this question before.

He smiled down at her. She was becomingly flushed, he thought, with a lock of newly blonde hair curling adorably by her ear, with her bosom heaving above her slightly low-cut frock. He had kissed each of those enticing mounds, just where the lace met the cream of her skin, before they had left the vicarage for the ride to Sir Quentin's... “Er, yes,” he said, grasping at the thread of her conversation. “Hot. Yes indeed.”

(The Reverend Mr Giles appeared to be, and in some particulars was, a respectable man of middle years, a pattern of rectitude. But he had a Past, and a current Secret; his private self, in other words, did not wholly match the pattern of his outward garments. His passion for his wife was only one such example.)

Mrs Giles, who deviated from the common way herself, understood the direction of his thoughts and his gaze. “Dearest,” she said softly, “Whilst I would happily find a quiet corner for a brief – or possibly not so brief -- excursion into pleasure, you know we must play chaperone. It's annoying, but there it is.”

“Yes,” he said. “Annoying.”

Smiling, Mrs Giles tapped him again with her fan, and they as one turned to inspect their charges for the evening.

Miss Buffy Summers was, as she had been since their arrival, standing between her most devoted suitors – Liam Angell, an Irishman whose residence in the district was a matter of some mystery, and Mr William Pratt, a young man who fancied himself quite the poet, in the manner of William Wordsworth with just a dash of that reprobate Lord Byron. (William Pratt, as Mr Giles would be the first to say, was sadly mistaken in his self-assessment.) Miss Summers's bright face wore an expression which both Mr Giles, who was her tutor, and Mrs Giles could read.

“Those boys are showing off and arguing with each other, and not paying her a bit of attention,” sighed Mrs Giles. “How very... masculine of them. And tedious.”

Mr Giles would have remonstrated with her for her insult to his sex, but he knew it would do no good. Instead he passed his gaze onto their other charge, Miss Dawn Summers, who was engaged in conversation with Miss Willow Rose and her bosom friend Miss Tara Mclay. (Miss Rose – whose family, some of the old biddies asserted, had changed its name from Rosenberg after immigration from Prussia – was a blue-stocking, which state Miss Dawn aspired to.) There, too, sat Mr Alexander Harris – rumour hinted at slightly improper passages already between Mr Harris and Miss Dawn, who was far too young for such attentions – and Mr Daniel Osborne, the latter young man a pleasant fellow of few words, whose talent for music was an ill-kept secret.

Mr Osborne had another secret or two as well, or so Mr and Mrs Giles suspected from their wide acquaintance with matters far removed from the usual lot of a vicar and his wife. Still, he lounged in a conventional enough manner, and that was not the Gileses' problem at the moment.

“My dear,” Mr Giles said, “should we intervene? In, er, that?”

Mrs Giles inspected; Mrs Giles sighed. “Mrs Summers did direct us to pay especial care to Miss Dawn's conversations, true enough. But do you think she'll pay the slightest attention to our rebukes?”

“No,” Mr Giles said. He had experienced Miss Dawn's intransigence more than once.

“You are so comforting, Rupert,” Mrs Giles said tartly. “Oh well. Tally ho, and other sporting noises.” She rose from her seat and began to settle her skirts, preparatory to sallying across the floor, but from nowhere appeared Sir Quentin. She was forced to smile (albeit dagger-edged) and greet their host.

Mr Giles also rose. “Sir Quentin,” he said with an ill grace. Although his living was in the Squire's gift, Mr Giles found it difficult at best to play politics.

Sir Quentin luckily ignored this borderline rudeness. His gaze was fixed (in a way Mr Giles did not care for, either) on Mrs Giles. “Madam,” he said with an unsettling relish, “did you hear the news about my newest rose?”

Mrs Giles stiffened. “No.”

She was the most noted gardener of the district, and in a small, highly discreet way traded in plants, balms, and tisanes from the vicarage garden. She was especially fond of roses, and especially annoyed by Sir Quentin's attempts to rival her efforts therein.

This explained the gloating tone in which Sir Quention remarked, “New. Deepest red, redder than any of yours, I fancy.”

“In April?” Mrs Giles snapped.

“Forced in my conservatory, ma'am. You must go and have a look sometime soon.”

“It is quite lovely,” said Mr Wyndam-Pryce, who'd trotted up sometime after his relation had accosted the Gileses. “Striking! Only a master hand could have derived that colour!”

Mr and Mrs Giles set their teeth, and smiled, with the most unchristian thoughts simmering behind their courtesy.

After some brief exchange of pleasantries, Sir Quentin and his obsequious connection passed on. They were scarcely out of earshot before Mrs Giles' gloved hand clamped on her husband's forearm. “Rupert, we must investigate!” she hissed.

“But--” he began.

At that moment, the trio of musicians struck up a country dance. Miss Summers was presented with two gentlemen's arms; after a hesitation, she took Mr Angell's. Mr Pratt frowned, gave way to a pout, and then stalked with fluttering coat over to where Miss Dawn was sitting. She, who had been glaring at the oblivious Mr Harris, leapt up with unmaidenly alacrity and took Mr Pratt's arm.

“There, they are dancing and safely occupied,” Mrs Giles said. “To the conservatory, please, dearest.”

Mr Giles opened his mouth to offer some sensible resistance, but he caught sight of his wife's flush (heightened now with anger) and the swelling of her bosom, and was minded of the conservatory's privacy. “Yes. Certainly, darling, yes.”

The air was cooler outside the ballroom. Mrs Giles led them unerringly down the carpeted halls – past the library, which as always gave Mr Giles a jealous twinge, being larger than he could manage to keep up – and to the glass enclosure, not more than two years old, at the back of the house.

It was a full moon, that April night, and the lunar glow illuminated the otherwise darkened conservatory. With the first step inside, Mr Giles breathed in the scents of living things, flowers, damp earth – and the floral perfume his wife favoured. “Dearest,” he said huskily, and pressed her hand.

But Mrs Giles had other concerns. “Where does he keep his roses, he showed me last month, I could have wrought vengeance on him for his overweening pride,” she muttered as she charged forward. Then, with a gladdened cry, “There!”

Mr Giles sent his gaze to heaven, prayed briefly for patience, and followed.

Her gloved fingers delicately touched the petal of a small blossom on an equally small bush. “Hmm,” she said, “the colour is well enough, as far as I can ascertain, but it's shockingly stunted.” The smile she threw at her husband was brighter far than the moon. “A fine specimen, but not as nice as mine.”

“I could have told you that, darling,” he said dryly. “He simply was trying to goad you.”

“And I suppose you've never been so goaded?” She stepped closer, as was her habit at the beginning of any argument. “Shall I remind you of when he brought over his recent acquisition of that sixteenth-century antiquarian volume, and you turned purple and almost--”

“Do be quiet, darling,” Mr Giles said, and then caught her in his arms and silenced her with his lips.

Mrs Giles had several excellent examples of his own weakness in the face of Sir Quentin's taunts, but her Rupert's touch as always drove such petty things out of her head. “Honey,” she murmured, and then opened her mouth to admit his tongue's investigation.

Their embrace had progressed almost to a point where Mr Giles might have forgot his position (and changed Mrs Giles' position to a supine one), when something hit the glass directly beside them.

“What the bloody hell,” said Mr Giles in a tone more suited to his Past than his present, and with one swift motion he put himself between his wife and the pane.

“What indeed,” said Mrs Giles, peeping around him – until she saw what lurked on the other side of the glass.

It was a strange, humped creature, all claws and teeth, wriggling whiskers and long, long ears....

“A were-rabbit!” Mrs Giles said in a wild, sweet but fear-struck soprano. “A killer bunny!”

Mr Giles was thinking rapidly about all recently reported incidences of the uncanny in the district. Had there been an influx of such supernaturally afflicted hares? Could that explain the recent depredations in local green-- “My dear,” he said, as the creature struck again at the glass, “I rather think the only foodstuff the creature wants is Sir Quentin's vegetables, there in the corner.”

She hid her face against his coat. “Please, Rupert, send it away.”

He knew that she had an unreasonable fear of all hares, rabbits, conies in general, and his heart melted within him. (Also, after a second look at the beast's teeth, he wasn't entirely sure his Anya wasn't right.) “Yes, dear. Don't you worry.”

Although he didn't have handy any major banishing spells, a practical magician like Mr Giles was quite able to manage a simple repulsion. It took only a wave of the hand and a few muttered words in Faerie, and the creature shuddered, hopped back, and then with a frustrated gnashing of really enormous teeth took flight.

The thunder of its leaping passage was obscured, however, by voices and footsteps at the threshold of the conservatory. Battle between Mr Angell and Mr Pratt had been rejoined, with Miss Summers as witnesses.

“Mr and Mrs Giles? Is there something wrong?” Miss Buffy Summers said, in a tone at once embarrassed at being caught unchaperoned with two gentlemen, but also surprisingly martial. In fact she grasped a handy shovel as she spoke – she was skilled at fighting (a skill in which Mr Giles most improperly tutored her) and impromptu weapons.

“Er, no,” Mr Giles said mildly. “Just... something outside.”

“But why are you here?” Mr Pratt inquired, with a slight sneer.

Mr Giles had no patience with the young man, and he was on the point of a crushing rebuke when from  
behind the party came Sir Quentin's voice. “What's all this then?”

“Oh, we had just come out to escape the rather stuffy ballroom, Rupert and I, and found these three,” Mrs Giles said alertly. Miss Summers' dropping of the shovel – and subsequent destruction of two small pots – was enough cover for the Gileses to herd everyone out of the conservatory and into the corridor. (Mrs Giles did manage to drop a barbed comment about the smallness of Sir Quentin's blossom as they went, however, which made Mr Giles choke back most unclerical laughter.)

As they went, however, their progress was halted by the most uncanny sound – a howl of a wolf, frighteningly close. Mr and Mrs Giles looked at each other meaningfully, nodded, and pushed everyone on.

When some half an hour later Mr Daniel Osborne reappeared in the ballroom, his hair disarranged and his smile surprisingly sharp, they looked at each other again and nodded.

Yes, they knew Mr Osborne's secret. But he seemed to have it well under control, and after all, who were they to judge?

“It is stuffy in here,” Mrs Giles said, plying her fan with great speed.

“Indeed, yes,” Mr Giles said, and discreetly drifted a finger on the soft skin under that adorable curl by her ear. “I think it's time to go home, don't you, darling?”


End file.
